In Cold Blood Character Analysis

Every person has been an outsider at one point or another. Many nonfiction writers such as John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood, use outsiders as characters in their stories.These type of characters help the writer to convey the argument they are trying to get across to the reader. In these nonfiction novels, outsiders play a critical role in the communities that they enter.
Outsiders bring change to the communities that they enter. In Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt is a writer from New York. He visits a town called Savannah,in Georgia. Berendt stays in Savannah for eight years. Over this span of time, many events occur in this town that the people wouldn’t believe would ever happen in their community. An example of such an event is the death of Danny Hansford. Danny Hansford was a friend and lover to Jim Williams, a wealthy antique dealer who lives in Savannah. Jim Williams is the one who is accused of killing Danny. Joe Odom,
In the novel, In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, two characters named Perry and Dick play the role of the outsiders. In the novel, Perry and Dick murder the Clutter family in their own home, in the town of Holcomb,Kansas. “Well, I took one look at Mr.Clutter, and it was hard to look again. I knew plain shooting couldn’t account for that much blood”(Capote,66). This murder destroyed the balance of an entire community. This was due to the fact that the Clutters were very well known in the community, “Everything Herb had he earned with the help of God. He was a modest man but a proud man, as he had a right to be. He raised a fine family, he made something of his life”(Capote,79). The Clutters were liked by almost the entire town. By murdering this family, Perry and Dick had changed the town completely. Before, people didn’t lock their doors at all. After the murders, residents were quick to do